I must be doing something wrong..

DigiAngel

My CP 700 Magecro has almost all gear golded (save the jewelry), stats where they need to be, all the right gear for DPS (Medusa/MS/Zaan/Maelstrom Inferno), and the right skills (alcasthq anyone?). And yet...here I sit at maybe 25K DPS on a good day, constantly out of magicka, even as I suck down pots. Maybe it's rotation, or something else. But as of now getting into vet trials is not going to happen. I fear the only thing that will increase my DPS is leveling. And frankly, I'm not going to play this game just to level up. Anyone have any advice? Maybe something I've missed.

UntilValhalla13

Which dummy are you using? If it's a skeleton, are you or someone else running ele drain on it? That would affect sustain and damage numbers. Which food are you using? Use ghastly eye bowl to help with sustain. Make sure your alchemy is maxed and you have the medicinal use passive to make potions last the longest. If you're sure about your rotation, use spell potions, (corn flower, lady's smock, water hyacinth). If you posted a parse video or something, it would be easier to find the problem.

DigiAngel

Thanks...I had not heard of Ghastly eye bowel....been using....frothgar I think. Almost able to make the max potions...gotta level that bit up. I'll do more testing..and yet it is on a skeleton as well as just seeing the stats in dungeons.

BejaProphet

Well there is good news and bad news. Bad news is I don’t know how to DPS magcro.

The good news is that I am 100% confident you are nowhere near the damage potential of a 700CP character.

The reason that is good news is that grinding is not the answer. Finding out how to optimize the little details of your build (enchants, mundus, food, etc), then finding a solid rotation, then putting in some hard work practicing on a training dummy will help unfathomably more than leveling.

I do not know what the best set up and rotation is for a magcro, but I will say this. I’ve never seen somebody really learn one of Alcasts builds and then suck specifically at damage.

There may be better builds. His build may be bad at other things. But if nobody gives you something better, then go to Alcasthq.com and learn his build and rotation. You will do way more than 25k when you are done practicing.

GreenHere

If you're running into sustain issues, changing food, Mundus buff, enchants, etc. (progressively, not all at once) is a good place to start. You want as little sustain as is needed to never run out of your resource, so you can devote all the rest into damage/power. You do lose damage potential by sacrificing Spell Damage glyphs and whatnot obviously, but that doesn't really matter if you're running out of juice and can't fire off your skills in the first place, ya know? A constant stream of slightly weaker skills is a lot better than complete downtime where you're firing off no skills at all. These are cheap(ish) and reversible changes to your build, so this is a good place to start for that reason. Mundus changes are free, food is next to free, and enchants are cheap. Experiment away!

Also, in regards to light attack weaving, make sure you're actually firing off (and landing) a light attack in between each skill cast. More often than not when I go to help someone with DPS, I watch them and they just get going so fast that they start dropping the light attacks and don't even notice. Just because you're clicking doesn't mean the LA is firing; the global cool down (GCD) often makes firing off every skill cast and LA press get wonky if you go too fast. Go slow. Light attack. Skill. Light attack. Skill. Speed up gradually, and find your max speed where you don't ever miss either the LA or the skill firing off properly. Many people just go too fast without realizing it.

Keep in mind, when people talk about getting 80-100K DPS on a dummy, they're talking about the Iron Atronach; 25K on a skeleton isn't as bad as you might think if you're comparing skele vs atro numbers. If you don't have one yourself, find a friend or guild who has an Iron Atronach to test on. It's the standard most people measure their damage on these days, and it provides a LOT of sustain help (in addition to a slew of other buffs).

GreenHere

Also, as @UntilValhalla13 said above, we could help more specifically where you need it by seeing a parse video -- but even just a Combat Metrics screenshot would help a lot. If you have the addon, type /cmx into chat, hit enter, and snap us a pic!

DigiAngel

Thanks all. This really must be the LA -> skill -> LA thing. There are some skill (Unnerving Boneyard) that just won't cancel the animation using a LA I found. Something that DOES is weapon swap though...so I'm trying to figure out how to really get this to work. I have a 6 button mouse that I've been using to quickly rotate through skills, but it looks like I'm going just too fast. I tried this morning to go LA LA -> skill -> LA LA in combat and that helped a bit. Looks like it's more practice I guess.

GreenHere

DigiAngel wrote: »

Thanks all. This really must be the LA -> skill -> LA thing. There are some skill (Unnerving Boneyard) that just won't cancel the animation using a LA I found. Something that DOES is weapon swap though...so I'm trying to figure out how to really get this to work. I have a 6 button mouse that I've been using to quickly rotate through skills, but it looks like I'm going just too fast. I tried this morning to go LA LA -> skill -> LA LA in combat and that helped a bit. Looks like it's more practice I guess.

While I haven't used it myself, I almost constantly hear people highly recommend the Perfect Weave addon. It might help!

Personally I'm not looking to get that rigid with my play habits, though. For me, the best advice I got on weaving was to do a light attack before every skill cast, as if it were a 2-button combo. Then just space them out appropriately so that the LA never fails. Previously I was doing the LAs after/in-between skills in my mind. You'd think it's the same right? But for whatever reason telling my brain "LA THEN skill, repeat for all eternity" worked miles better than "Skill + LA + skill + LA + skill +..." in practice. But I'm on a controller, and IIRC that advice was given to me specifically because I was on controller, so YMMV.

Fennwitty

DigiAngel wrote: »

Thanks all. This really must be the LA -> skill -> LA thing. There are some skill (Unnerving Boneyard) that just won't cancel the animation using a LA I found. Something that DOES is weapon swap though...so I'm trying to figure out how to really get this to work. I have a 6 button mouse that I've been using to quickly rotate through skills, but it looks like I'm going just too fast. I tried this morning to go LA LA -> skill -> LA LA in combat and that helped a bit. Looks like it's more practice I guess.

Are you trying to cancel the skill animation with a light attack? It's the other way around.

Some skills can have their apparent skill animations canceled through a bar swap -- but that's another level of skill vs. normal light attack animation canceling.

DigiAngel

Honestly I start out with an LA...but then it just starts to blur into LA SKILL LA SKILL and so one. I am now seeing though that the skills cancel the LA, so that's a plus thanks

etchedpixels

other things to look at

- Make sure you max the CP in rejuvenation and slot it. The U29 changes to sustain definitely made sustain worse and it's now almost an essential thing for everyone despite being a slottable CP

- Look at your buffs and sources of resource. Do you have elemental drain running ? I only necrotank but I seem to remember slotting mystic siphon is instant 3% damage increase. Summoner's armour reduces some skill costs by 12%, slotting expunge is another 3% off costs, undead confederate passive gives you a big recovery boost providing you keep something undead running around

- On the damage side you need enough penetration or you'll be throwing stuff away. Likewise you want to have all the damage buffs you can keep up or someone provides (which the skeleton won't simulate but the trial dummy does). Slot radiant magelight in non group situations and you've got major prophecy (more spell crit) for free, hit them with degeneration and you've got 20 seconds of major sorcery (more spell damage), and if slotted about 4% more regen if you have two mages guild on the front bar. Ele drain will give you sustain and your target major breach and can be backbarred which (and I don't know if this works for necro) lets you run dual wield front bar (but no dual wield skills only passives) which can be a win depending on play style and situation.

All this stuff stacks up, along if need be with infused regen on jewellery and makes a big difference.

DigiAngel

Thank so much for the info! I find I struggle just in Trials and Dungeons...everything else is a breeze really as it relates to sustain. Maybe I'm just not cut out for DPS and should switch to tank

Magdalina

I think you may also want to give the big atro dummy a try. Don't even have to kill it all the way, just do some and see how much you're pulling there. Because when 99% of people say 'I do 80-90-150k dps' they mean the iron atro dummy which conveniently has all the buffs/debuffs and throws shards at you on cooldown. Yes, it's not an accurate measure of what you'll do in a dungeon or even in a trial in a suboptimised group and without being used to mechanics yourself, but it's a measure of where you actually stand in perfect conditions compared to others. The difference all these buffs make is HUGE, and they're also one of the biggest sustain contributors. No one comes to a random boss and suddenly pushes 110k dps - that's what they do in a 100% optimized group which is running every buff and support set possible with like 100% uptime.

A lot of guilds have those in guild halls, see if one of yours has it maybe, or if any of your friends do.

DigiAngel

Thank you!